What a bloody good post :)
Cheers Dave
Horse
On 18/09/2013 20:18, david buchanan wrote:
In the "Questions for Marsha" thread, Arlo said to Ron:
Marsha's "neti neti" is another way of saying "undefined". No one disputes this. No one has said Dynamic Quality is definable. [...] So once we've left the
meditative trance on the mountaintop, once we're immersed in a metaphysical dialogue, meaning is important. Once we call that undefined 'neti neti' by the term "Quality"
or "Dynamic Quality" or "Value" or "Experience", we are pointing to something salient and meaningful. Seeing this primary undefined as Quality/value
is the root of all Pirsig's subsequent writings. It 'points to' meaning, even if 'definition' is impossible. As with you, Ron, I'm not sure what sense it makes to suggest that
'not this, not that' is the evolutionary force. All this does is say "we can't define the evolutionary force". Hell, even the attribute "evolutionary" points
to meaning, as does "force". To be genuine, Marsha would have to object to Pirsig referring to the undefined as "Quality" as even this violates the 'neti,
neti' by assigning
specific meaning to an undefinable.
dmb says:
Yea, I guess everybody knows that DQ can't be defined. The problem is that
Marsha is constantly invoking this indefinability without understanding what it
actually means. It's important to understand WHY it can't be defined and HOW
Pirsig's metaphysics can be built around DQ despite its ineffability. You
probably don't need an explanation, Arlo, but let me put one on the table for
anyone who's interested in the MOQ and/or not interested in nihilistic
relativism.
One way to approach this is to recall the question that started the metaphysical ball rolling in
the first place. Pirsig was just trying to teach some teenagers how to write but a faculty asked
him if undefined quality is subjective or objective. Well, that's exactly where the answer would be
"neither this nor that". Subject-Object metaphysics says it has to be one or the other
and that the former isn't really real. Within SOM, quality is usually considered to be
"just" subjective.
As we can see, I think, Marsha's half-baked invocations of DQ's indefinability and constantly
citing her own meditative experience has the effective of turning the MOQ into some kind of
solipsistic subjectivism. Thus the cure is re-infected with the disease; the MOQ is converted back
into the worst kind of SOMism. This not only introduces the relativism and the "psychic
solitary confinement" of SOM but it also turns Quality back into that whimsical and capricious
"whatever you like". The MOQ is not just whatever you like. It is static, knowable,
divisible, definable and intelligible, as any metaphysic must be. And that's what's really in
dispute. Basically, Marsha cannot accept the idea that she, or anyone else, can be right or wrong
about metaphysics. Sigh. So static patterns aren't necessarily real or true and DQ is just not this
and not that. Nothing is real and nothing is right or wrong.
Pirsig says the MOQ is a "contraction in terms" precisely because metaphysics
must be definable and yet the whole thing is built around an undefined term. And it's no
accident, of course that this basic claim is reflected in the MOQ's first and most basic
distinction: static and Dynamic. The most succinct statement about this distinction tells
us quite simply and clearly that concepts are static and reality is Dynamic. That sums it
all up pretty well but that pithy little slogan is packed with meaning and import. Once
this distinction is clear, the distinction between concepts and reality, everything else
in the MOQ can be understood in that light.
One thing we really must NOT do, of course, is try to understand the MOQ's "reality" as objective
or as a "reality" that is opposed to mere appearance, as Ron pointed out. One of the reasons we can
rightly refer to subject-object dualism as a "metaphysics" is because subjects and objects are
considered to be the primary realities which make experience possible. In philosophy they are the conditions
for the possibility of experience, what reality must really be like prior to experience. Metaphysics is sort
of infamous for making up all kinds of explanations involving structures of reality that underly appearance
or are beyond the realm of experience. Pirsig doesn't do that. That's what he means when he says DQ is NOT a
metaphysical chess piece. In the history of metaphysics, this is pretty damn radical. To cut things into
static and Dynamic is a big move. The distinction between concepts and reality REPLACES the distinction
between subjects and objects. It replaces the distinc
tion between appearance and reality. DQ is not intellectually knowable or definable but
it is not beyond appearances. It is direct, everyday experience, the cutting edge of
experience and we all know it directly at every moment. Obviously, we experience concepts
too. They're quite familiar and knowable and not at all beyond appearances. In a very
important sense, Pirsig's MOQ does not posit any metaphysical explanations or ontological
structures that supposedly give rise to experience. Instead, the starting point is
experience itself. Reality is experience itself. This is radical empiricism, where
experience and reality are the same thing. And if we look to the hot stove example, it
easy to show how "experience" is this sense is neither this nor that and yet it
is quite real and directly known.
"Any person of any philosophic persuasion who sits on a hot stove will verify
without any intellectual argument whatsoever that he is in an undeniably low-quality
situation: that the value of his predicament is negative. This low quality is not just a
vague, wooly-headed, crypto-religious, metaphysical abstraction. It is an
experience." (LILA)
One might be unmoved by arguments about the effects of hot stoves on human flesh but
experience will keep one honest because there's no arguing with reality. The one who
refuses to listen to those static warnings will certainly get burned. Concepts lead us
through experience well or badly and that's all that real or true can ever mean within
the pragmatics of the MOQ. The MOQ rejects the correspondence theory of truth precisely
because it construes truth as a representation of the "real" structure of
reality. In the MOQ, reality is not a structure or entity of any kind but rather the
ongoing process of experience itself. This reality is indefinite, an ever-changing flux,
an aesthetic continuum, undefined yet always charged with value, either positive or
negative, rightness or wrongness.
And, as the hot stove example shows, we can even act on this value even before we have a
chance to think about it. We respond to reality immediately all the time. This is not
some special mountain-top experience or even a particular meditative disciple. It the
immediate of flux of life, direct everyday experience. As the native American mystics
show, there's no need to make a big fuss about or turn it into some exotic esoterica. Zen
ain't supposed to be fancy either, as in "just fixing," and both of these
associations are consistent with the MOQ non-theoretical starting point: experience as
such.
This is the cure that kills the disease. It's static and knowable and definable
and we can contrast the MOQ with all the metaphysical systems that put the real
reality outside of experience. Experience is no longer merely subjective nor is
it contrasted with reality. Instead, experience IS reality and all static
concepts are derived from that experiential reality.
Just one more point:
Please notice what happens to concepts in this view. Since they are all derived
from experience, they are all secondary formations, even the concepts that
supposedly stand for primary realities. There are many such concepts even
outside of philosophy. This includes subjects and objects, of course, but also
gravity and God, time and space, heaven and hell. In the MOQ, no concept can
rightly be taken as referring to a primary ontological reality. This is the
Copernican revolution writ large. Just as the astronomer's new
conceptualization virtually changed the very structure of the universe, the MOQ
arranges everything around a new center point. The MOQ puts everything else in
orbit around DQ. It's neither this nor that, but it's the focal point of
everything we can say about the MOQ.
And this focal point, around which all of the MOQ's concepts are arranged, is
NOT Marsha's private pet or some room for which only she has the key. That
attitude is way too sanctimonious and it's as pretentious as a monkey in a tux.
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